Grandmother's "Toki Soba"
The other day, I got a 10% discount coupon for a local conveyor belt sushi restaurant. I went out feeling lucky, but the plate system had completely changed.
In the past, a wide variety of sushi plates would come spinning by, and we would pick the toppings we liked or decide which plates to take while consulting our wallets.
However, now there are few sushi plates spinning by, and ordering via a touch panel has become the mainstream.
While there is the benefit of being able to eat your favorite toppings immediately, it feels a bit sad that I can no longer experience the thrill of feeling frustrated when someone else "takes" the plate right before I can grab it.
The sushi ordered via the touch panel had the same plate color regardless of the price. When I finished eating and stacked them up, the staff would promptly take them away, saying, "I'll clear these for you."
Since the touch panel plates are automatically calculated the moment they are ordered, there is no longer any need to stack them high on the table, is there?
I also took some plates that were spinning by because they had toppings I liked, and those had different colors based on the price. I wondered how they would calculate it, but when I finished eating, they read the prices of the color-coded plates and added them to the total from the touch panel.
The analog era of counting plates stacked on the table by hand has passed.
The era when you felt embarrassed about being a big eater or only eating cheap items when you finished your meal and the staff counted the high stack of plates is over.
🍣🍣🍣
When I was in junior high school, I went to a conveyor belt sushi restaurant with my whole family. When it came time to pay, my grandmother suddenly asked the staff member who was counting the plates,
she asked.
The staff member replied, "It is 7:XX PM," and went back to counting.
My grandmother was the type to talk to staff members without any ill intent. Since she just felt like talking at that moment, we didn't think anything of it either.
In the car on the way home, someone in my family said,
"Because you asked for the time, the staff member miscounted the plates."
they said.
My grandmother got angry, saying, "That's impossible!" She thought she was being criticized.
She thought she was being blamed.
"Mom, thanks to you, it ended up being cheap! 💕"
my mother laughed out loud.
Even though the number of plates had exceeded the high twenties, the clerk started counting from 19 instead.
"I made a profit💕"
My mother laughed, and my grandmother began to boast that she had achieved a great feat.
My father also burst out laughing, saying, "That's just like the Rakugo story 'Toki Soba'😂."
What a terrible family.
"Toki Soba"
As the name 'Nihachi Soba' suggests, the price of soba in the Edo period was 16 mon. One day, a customer paid for the noodles one by one and asked, "What time is it?" to which the shopkeeper replied, "It's eight o'clock." Although he had only counted up to 4 or 5 plates, by asking the time, he managed to start counting from 8, allowing him to eat the soba for a lower price. A man who saw this tried to imitate him to get a cheap meal, but because the time he asked was earlier than the number of plates he had counted, he ended up losing money—a humorous Rakugo story.
Thinking it was a good shop that gave us a discount, we went to that same conveyor belt sushi restaurant for our next meal out.
Perhaps they felt a little guilty, too.
Then, my grandmother, getting carried away, asked the clerk with a smirk,
The clerk replied, "It is XX minutes past 7 PM," and then counted the exact number of plates.
If we hadn't been able to pay the regular price at that moment, I think it would have become difficult to go to that shop.
Thanks to that, we continued to use it as our favorite shop as a whole family.
My grandmother, who only managed to pull off the 'Toki Soba' trick once, looked a little dissatisfied, though.
It was a funny memory.